A comedian has apparently shredded £10,000 over David Beckham’s role as Qatar’s World Cup ambassador
A British comedian appeared to shred £10,000 ($11,000) in a video after failing to receive a response from David Beckham over his controversial role as a Qatar World Cup ambassador.
On Sunday, Joe Lycett began tweeting an hourly countdown until his UK midday deadline (7am ET). At 12 pm GMT, he posted a video of himself shredding the money on www.benderslikebeckham.com, a website Lycett had been tweeting links to.
He later posted it on his social media accounts with the caption “a platform for progress,” likely a reference to a statement made by the soccer star in a pre-recorded message at Qatar’s Supreme Committee’s Generation Amazing youth festival in Doha, where he used those words to describe this year’s World Cup.
On November 13, Lycett, who describes himself as queer on his website, posted a video on Twitter, saying he would donate £10,000 to charities supporting “queer people in football” or put the money through the shredder, along with “Beckham’s reputation as a gay icon,” if the former England captain did not cut ties with Qatar within the week. Homosexuality in Qatar is illegal and punishable by up to three years in prison.
Beckham did not respond and, in the video posted on his Twitter feed on Sunday, Lycett appeared to put piles of money into an industrial shredder while wearing a rainbow-colored top.
